Random thoughts on the creative life, small business, traditional architecture and city design, and steady state economic policy.
For as long as I can remember I’ve been making shit up. When I was four, I’d turn my front yard into a vast molten wasteland, and I would jump about with my trusted “lifesaver” and save the day. When I was eight, I wrote my first original work, a poem about a killer who sneaks up on a woman, and though the subject matter prompted a certain amount of parental hand-wringing, I received enough positive attention for the story that I became addicted to the rush of creation. Through stories I could say things that I’d never be able to say out loud, which was a magical gift for a socially awkward ginger from small town midwestern USofA.
I have been a great many things during my 37 years on this planet. I’ve been a songwriter, and a singer in bands. I’ve been a banker, a loan officer, a business consultant. I’ve been a writer and publisher, start-up founder, and a chief marketing officer. Yet through it all, I have always written stories, and I’ve found the most joy from crafting narratives out of the raw ingredients of life.
Though they may seem different, I see little difference between writing a song or a short story, and crafting a marketing campaign. Both require the author to build something cohesive out of whatever ingredients they find lying around. Both rely on narrative flow and world-building in order to manufacture an experience for the audience. And both require a decided amount of creativity to pull off effectively.
From that first poem when I was eight to now, I have dedicated my life to telling stories, to documenting my time on earth in whatever format I can muster. Whether it’s a song, story, digital collage, or marketing campaign, I am motivated by the story, by the narrative, by the feeling of being swept away somewhere else.
Maya Angelou said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you,” and I couldn’t agree more. It’s a river I can’t dam. So, why try?
- Tres Crow
Tres Crow is a writer, founder of DogEatCrow marketing agency, the Co-Founder of the event mapping technology Walkabout, Chief Marketing Officer of MapMeLocal, Founder of the Climate Change non-profit the billi, and an advocate for sustainable design, architecture, and economic policy, and the small businesses that make it all possible.